Though he lived in D.C. for 13 years, Lodge, 52, is now based in L.A., something that proved useful for his “Double Indemnity” role. His character, an insurance agent living in Los Angeles in the 1930s, gets so good at thinking like a criminal that he becomes one. Film-noir-esque murder and sexy mayhem ensue.

“When I first moved [to L.A.], I was fascinated by these ’30s and ’40s crimes, like the Black Dahlia,” Lodge said. Almost all the locations mentioned in the play “are within two miles of where I’m currently living,” he said. “I know exactly where all these people are. I can picture it in my head.”

David Snider is joining Arena Stage as director of artistic programming. Currently the producing artistic director and chief executive of the Young Playwrights’ Theater, Snider will take charge of Arena’s artistic development department in July, overseeing the American Voices New Play Institute, casting, dramaturgy and audience enrichment.

“I think he is the right person at the right time for Arena Stage,” said Artistic Director Molly Smith.

Snider, selected from a national pool of 70 applicants, said he’ll focus on “finding who Arena is in this new space [and] building an even stronger network of local and national artists who feel like Arena is a home base for them. . . . As we move forward, what is Arena in the 21st century?

“Arena’s been on my radar a long time,” he said. “Zelda Fichandler [a co-founder and longtime artistic director at Arena] was my mentor during graduate school at NYU, so joining Arena Stage feels like a kind of homecoming to me.”

He’s come a long way from his theatrical debut at age 5 — a pretty impressive gig, considering the kindergartner landed a part in a high school play. “I was a doll that came to life,” he said, in a play whose title he can’t recall. “I just remember the lights coming up on my face. . . and that was it for me. I was hooked.”

A field trip to hell

Tom Prewitt is headed south. Literally. He’s driving through the mountains, en route from Boston to Washington after his son’s graduation from Tufts University. And he’s directing American Ensemble Theater’s “Bobby Gould in Hell,” David Mamet’s field trip to the underworld.

Prewitt knows what you imagine when you visualize hell: the devil with that Lucifer leer on his face and an American Gothic pitchfork in his hand.

“You’re talking about puncturing preconceived notions of what it’s like to be in hell,” Prewitt said. In the play, the Interrogator enters “dressed in fishing garb. That’s not your typical notion of Satan’s day off.”

Bobby Gould is put through the judgment wringer as the Interrogator determines whether he deserves damnation or salvation. Bobby’s effort at self-defense goes something like, “I’d say, grading on a curve, I was a straight B-minus sort of a guy.” His ex-girlfriend is called as a prosecuting witness. “I think that’s when Bobby essentially knows his goose is cooked,” Prewitt said.

Though he flirted with a set depicting the hellish places we encounter in daily life — the DMV, the dentist’s chair — he settled on “an abstract route. . . . It’s tied to the idea that the tortures we receive in the afterlife, or the rewards, are very much what we deserve.”

He’s got a “teeny little circus ring” set up in the center of the Round House Theatre in Silver Spring, where he’s ringleading “The Illusion,” a play he first directed at the University of Maryland in 2009. It’s his second stint with Forum Theatre, in residence at Round House, this season; he acted in “The Language Archive” earlier this year.

“I love the idea of the circus,” he said. “It’s a magical place, but it can be a little sinister, too.”

“When I created the circus, I was thinking specifically of an environment that actors would find fun and energizing,” he said. “And I said, ‘What’s a cave today?’ I don’t know of any caves. To me, it didn’t resonate. I had to find a location that made sense to me that helped me find my way into this story.”

Three years after his first stab at the show, Hébert is ready to dig a little deeper. “We had a good production” at Maryland, he said. “But I never felt like I finished the work of it. It requires some mature people to really get the depth that the text is asking for. . . . You’re always kind of wondering what it would be like if you could have people out there who’ve lived a life.”

Hébert hopes the cast, which includes two actors from the Maryland production, will see the circus setting as a playground. “I was hoping if I found my way in that way, that the actors would also find their way in through that same door.”

Once called “the devil child,” Michaela DePrince lost her family to war, was adopted and raised in New Jersey, and now dances with Dutch National Ballet. But her odyssey from Sierra Leone to the spotlight is not over yet.

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